


This Must Be The Place

by Blanquette



Series: Corner Bakery [3]
Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Bakery, Belonging, Friendship, Gen, Male Friendship, OT7, One Shot, Pastries, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 17:24:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12325494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blanquette/pseuds/Blanquette
Summary: Hoseok drifts in one day.He comes for the pastries, but stays for something else.





	This Must Be The Place

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure where this came from but I felt like returning to this universe for a bit. Hope you'll enjoy!  
> Title is from a Talking Heads song which lyrics where somehow fitting.

**1.**

Hoseok is a flighty thing. He weaves in and out of people’s life, bright and smiley; it makes everything easy. No one really knows him, but then everyone does. It’s convenient, like this. He’s free.

“I’m starting to feel insulted that you never enter.”

He looks up from his crouching position in front of the bakery’s glass window. Too focused on staring at the pastries neatly lined up on the other side, he hadn’t noticed the dark-haired man had left his position behind the counter.

Hoseok stands up, sheepish.

“I’ll give you something, come on.”

The guy is already walking back through the door, and Hoseok figures he has nothing to lose following him in. The shop looked bigger from the outside. It’s actually just the counter, and then wooden tables and pretty chairs lined up in two rows in an empty space on the left. It’s nice, though. Autumn colors and wood and dimmed lights. Feels homey. It’s a deep contrast to the owner, all sharp edges and hard stares.

“Are you homeless?”

There’s a small clatter when said owner puts a plate and a dessert fork in front of Hoseok, on top of the small wooden table Hoseok elected. The one nearest the window. Prettily arranged in the dish are a mini chocolate bread, a Polish brioche, and a vanilla tart that looks so shiny he’s pretty sure he could see his own reflection on its surface.

“Do I look homeless?”

The guy sits down, crosses his arms on his chest.

“You crouch in front of my window like a stray cat. Stare at the pastries. I timed you, once. You stayed fourteen minutes. Yet you never enter.”

Hoseok juts out his lower lip and thinks it over for a second.

“I guess, technically, I am.”

The owner raises both his eyebrows and Hoseok takes advantage of his silence to dig into the brioche. There’s meringue on top. It’s delicious.

“This is amazing.”

“How can you be ‘technically’ homeless?”

“Well, I don’t have a house.”

“That’s not just technical. That’s literally what being homeless means. It’s right there in the word.”

Hoseok points at the baker with the tiny fork, a bright smile on his face.

“You got me there.”

He tries the chocolate bread next. It’s just the right amount of buttery, crisp and golden on top, still warm; the chocolate melts on his tongue. It’s heavenly. Hoseok starts to get scared of the tart. He might just pass out.

“Man, really, this is so good. So good. I don’t sleep on the street is what I meant.”

“Where do you sleep, then?”

“People’s couches? The internet café sometimes, too. They have beds and showers, it’s amazing.”

Hoseok was right about the vanilla tart, and he almost blinks back tears.

“Not as amazing as this though, seriously, you should like, sell those.”

“Are you an idiot?”

Hoseok grins and there it is, the easy familiarity he achieves with everyone he meets. The guy unfurls his arms and laughs, putting his elbows on the table. It’s easy enough, being liked, when you look like Hoseok.

“I guess I am, I mean, I do live on sofas after all.”

The guy sighs, straightens up in his chair.

“I’m Yoo Kihyun. You can come here whenever you’re hungry.”

Hoseok figures that he probably will.

 

**2.**

The bakery becomes Hoseok’s second (or really, first) home. He goes there when he’s hungry. When it’s raining. When he’s bored. He sits in a corner, looks at the paintings on the walls. Eat whatever Kihyun feels like sparing. They don’t talk a lot, Kihyun is always busy. Hoseok figures that it is for the best. He doesn’t like getting attached to people. He tires easily. And they do, too, and it hurts, when he sees the disappointment in their eyes, when they realize he is not what they thought. When he sees how everything they have has become tedious and frail. So it is better like this, teetering on the edge of friendship, but not quite there.

Kihyun doesn’t seem to mind. He makes him his taste-taster. Gives him a smile when he gets in, a parting nod when he leaves. Hoseok is just a regular. Maybe one that never pays, maybe one that the owner likes more than others, but a regular nonetheless. He likes it like this. There’s other people, that Hoseok acknowledges as part of Kihyun’s circle. He keeps them at arm-length, too, but they don’t seem to mind either way. There’s the tall, spacey one. The loud one, that’s apparently responsible for the art adorning the wall, and Hoseok gets a bit uncomfortable when he thinks about it. It’s like having a glimpse into the other’s mind, maybe too intimate for comfort. There’s the one that he sometimes goes to the gym with, when he can spare some cash. The one that goes on trips with Kihyun, with dimples deep as canyons.

There is a last one, that he only saw in passing. One that goes on trips without Kihyun, and that one, Hoseok doesn’t really like. When Kihyun watches him leave his shop, his face is always full of shadows.

 

**3.**

It’s almost three months in and a lot of foreign pastries later that the shift occurs. It’s a bit late, all the customers have left as the evening started to eat the sunlight off the tables. Hoseok is seated in his favorite corner, and when Kihyun sits opposite him, something sinks in his stomach. Kihyun looks tired, and as he rests his chin in his hand, Hoseok knows it’s about to get personal. He doesn’t do that. He doesn’t do evening confessions. He smiles, about to say something to escape, but Kihyun beats him to it.

“Have you ever been in love?”

Love isn’t something Hoseok is interested in.

“I never stayed long enough for that to happen”, he says, and he’s surprised at the bitterness in his own voice.

“Don’t you… Don’t you want to, though?”

Hoseok tilts his head, thoughtful. Kihyun doesn’t move, waits him out.

“It doesn’t seem to make you happy.”

Kihyun has a sudden laugh, cut short when he starts to cough.

“Yeah, I guess it doesn’t. Not all the time.”

“When is he coming back?”

Kihyun winces.

“Was I that obvious?”

“Everybody pretty much knows.”

There’s a thoughtful hum, and Kihyun reclines in his seat, staring at Hoseok, who feels uncomfortable again.

“I don’t know. When are you leaving?”

“Excuse me?”

“When are you leaving. I’ve been waiting on you to disappear, because you say that’s what you do, and yet you never did.”

“I…”

He never felt the urge to leave. Not yet. There’s a small voice at the back of his mind, saying maybe he never will. He looks around, at the small bakery engulfed in shadows. He knows every corner of it. The man sitting in front of him, he could draw him with his eyes closed. And yet, there is no jaded feeling eating at him, urging him to go see elsewhere, telling him that his time here is over. Kihyun is patiently looking at him, and there is no disappointment is his eyes, no expectations either. He looks tired, yes, but not from Hoseok’s presence.

None of them do. Not the tall, spacey one, who’s called Hyungwon and who’s always tired, so they will have coffee together before he has to go back to work. Not the loud one, Minhyuk, who’s probably in love with Hyungwon even if he doesn’t know it yet, and who should really stop insisting because no, Hoseok will never pose naked for him. Not the one he goes to the gym with, either. Hyunwoo, who likes dancing and is weirdly funny at times, despite his quiet demeanor. Who offered his couch so many times everyone considers them roommates. Or Jooheon, who goes on trips with Kihyun, and always brings back awfully cheesy souvenirs Hoseok littered Hyunwoo’s apartment with.

There’s a strange feeling blooming in his chest and he shifts, uncomfortable.

“I guess I’ll… stay for a bit.”

There’s a slow, knowing smile spreading on Kihyun’s face, but he doesn’t say anything.

 

**4.**

Hoseok stays. He’s here when Changkyun comes back, and he decides the guy’s all right, after all, when he makes the shadows on Kihyun’s face dissolve in laughter. He’s here when Hyungwon and Minhyuk try, and try, and try again, and maybe this time it will stuck. He’s here when Kihyun decides to buy the shop next-door to expand his business, because that magazine spread gave him way more publicity than he could handle. He’s here to help Hyunwoo and Jooheon paint the walls without them even asking, and then he smiles to the first customer that sits at the new tables, taking a little notepad out of the apron Kihyun insisted he had to wear if he was going to work for him.

He feels like a dog that wandered off the streets in someone’s home and got a little too comfortable. He says that to Kihyun once, who just laughs, and hands him a plate full of buns for the window display. But the baker takes to ruffling his hair once in a while, with a glint in his eyes, and Hoseok just resigns himself to forever be associated with a mutt.

“I think you’re more like a stray cat,” Minhyuk tells him, on one of these days where he just comes to lounge around the shop all afternoon. His head is resting on the table, and his recently bleached hair catches the light, making him look like a tiny sun against the dark surface of the wood.

“How so?”

“Well, you just came in and made a home here. And then no one expects you to do tricks, or to even stay, really, so it’s always a nice surprise when you’re around.”

“I made a home?”

“Well, didn’t you?”

Minhyuk lifts his head, blinking up at him. Hoseok just stares.

“I wouldn’t mind some coffee with one of those scones.”

“Right away.”

Hoseok turns back, to the counter, and pauses there for a bit. A stray cat. The image seems to be fitting. There is a strange sense of belonging blooming somewhere next to his heart. Maybe he did make a home. Maybe this is the place.  

 

 

 

 


End file.
